angels

angels From the Greek ‘angelos’, meaning messenger, angels are seen as intermediaries between heaven and earth. This notion of angel as messenger is found particularly in the monotheistic religions (for in polytheistic religions, gods and goddesses often arrive in person to deliver messages), and was initially developed in the first major monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism. In Judaism, stories of angels occur throughout the Hebrew scriptures, and speculation about the nature of angels is found in the Talmud. Christianity inherited its ideas about angels from Judaism, and significantly developed them, especially in the Middle Ages. In Islam, angels appear in the Koran, and are important figures to Mohammed, as when Djibril (Gabriel) contacted the Prophet and dictated the Koran to him, and conducted him to heaven on the Night Journey. In some Islamic areas of the world, angels — many with unusual names — are important in popular Islamic practices, many of which may be rooted in the pre-Islamic religion of those areas. In recent years, angels have come to be very important in the (primarily North American) New Age religious movement.

There has been considerable debate as to whether angels can be said to have bodies. In the Christian tradition, Jesus' statement in Luke 20:36, that human beings, after our resurrection, will be ‘like the angels’ is important but not necessarily clarifying. Given that there have been differences of opinion in the Christian tradition about whether our resurrection will be bodily, this passage in Luke can be seen to attribute embodiment to angels — or not to. Origen (c.185–c.254) suggested that angels have a subtle or ethereal body, and this opinion continued to be held into the Middle Ages by philosophers such as the twelfth-century Duns Scotus. However, this view was challenged by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, who argued that intellect is above sense, and therefore some creatures must be incorporeal and comprehensible by the intellect only. Angels are such incorporeal creatures and are purely spiritual, as suggested, for example, in Psalm 104:4, which affirms that God ‘makes his angels spirits’. Aquinas saw angels not as belonging to a single species, but each as having its own separate substance and species.

Aquinas also argued that angels are incorruptible, and indeed the general opinion within the church, in the Middle Ages, was that angels are perfect and therefore in no danger of sinning, unlike human beings who are, of course, sinful by nature. Indeed, even Lucifer, like all the angels, was created in a state of grace. Aquinas suggested that Lucifer impiously exercised the free will with which all angels are endowed, and hence fell from grace. (This accords with the traditional story in Christianity, of Lucifer, jealous of God, leading a rebellion of angels against the heavenly order, and thereby being thrown out of heaven; he continued to wage war against God in his creation, Earth — as, for example, in the Garden of Eden.) Origen argued that angels were created with free will, and some eventually migrated away from God, some taking on human form, and those who migrated the furthest becoming demons. Another story of fallen angels is found in the apocalyptic Book of Enoch, in which a group of angels lusted after human women, and thus fell when they left their heavenly abode to have sexual intercourse with those women.

Despite his views on the ‘spirit’ nature of angels, Aquinas agreed that angels can, visiting the earthly realm, assume bodies, as in the case of the angels who visited Abraham in Genesis 18. There are numerous examples, in the scriptures of the main monotheistic religions, in fiction, in film, and in the writings of the twentieth-century New Age movement, of angels assuming bodily form when they come to earth. There are many such embodied angels in the Hebrew scriptures and New Testament, two of the most well-known examples being the angel who wrestles with Jacob (Genesis 32), and the angel Gabriel, who visited Mary to announce the birth of Jesus — the Annunciation (Luke 1:26–38). A number of popular films in the twentieth century played on the idea of angels taking human bodily form when they come to earth. The most famous, perhaps, is the aptly named Clarence Oddbody, the kind but rather bumbling angel (odd in his angelic body because, as he is a second-class angel, he has no wings yet) who comes to earth to help George Bailey, in Frank Capra's film, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), giving him the gift of reliving events as if he had never been born. Oddbody plays the familiar role of guardian angel. The notion that each person has a guardian angel to guide them is found in numerous religious traditions, but has been developed especially in Christianity; Aquinas, for example, suggested that each person has a guardian close to hand throughout life. The theme of the guardian angel taking human bodily form is also found in The Bishop's Wife (1947), in which Cary Grant plays a suave and soothing angel, Dudley, sent to the aid of an absent-minded Episcopalian bishop, his family, and his friends. Wim Wenders' 1988 film, Wings of Desire, explores the idea of an angel, Ganz — one of many watching life in Berlin from a distance — who wishes not merely to assume bodily form, but to experience earthly life as humans do, after falling in love with a circus performer. Wenders takes the trope of the fall of angels onto earth, and gives it an unusual twist by suggesting that redemption occurs with a descent into physicality. Embodied angels on earth play an important part in many New Age recovery stories and narratives of near-death experiences: much New Age literature, such as the Angel Times, a magazine begun in 1994 in the USA, explores these themes.

The gender of angels has been debated. Angels have most often been considered androgynous, or to be neither distinctly female or male, or to combine both genders. Jesus' statement in the Gospel of Matthew may be evidence for this sort of view within the Christian tradition: ‘At the resurrection men and women do not marry; they are like angels in heaven’ (Matthew 22: 30). Thus angels are generally portrayed in paintings and sculpture as of indistinct gender, or in a pre-pubescent human form. Angels are therefore by default often thought of as male, although the archangel Gabriel — one of the two highest ranking angels in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — is commonly thought to be female, and depicted as such, at least within Christianity.

Wings are perhaps the most distinctive symbol of the angel ‘body’ and represent swiftness, power, and spirit. However, the notion of angels as winged creatures is not scriptural, but, rather, was developed in the Middle Ages. Depictions of winged angels first occurred in the fourth century. Indeed, in the early (pre-fourth-century) Church, figures such as wanderers with a staff and young men clothed in simple tunics may represent angels, as in the wall paintings of the Priscilla catacomb in Rome. The depiction of angels as ‘putti’ — small children's heads with wings — became popular in the Renaissance. At the same time, artists came to paint more angels as female. Angels are almost always shown as young, for they are changeless, so time does not exist for them. They enjoy perpetual youth.

Jane Shaw